I find short stories quite difficult to write, and I don’t really read them either. But the longer form novel, allowing time to build a character or sequence of scenes with a lot of detail, seems much more fun to write.
I don’t really write stories anymore. If I write anything it’s usually in screenplay form, and as I am not very self-motivated that’s a rarity. (I try not to call myself a writer)
I have two friends who wrote a book together but went and self-published it via Amazon’s Kindle Books. It’s definitely their “starter book” - and they’re coming out with a second one soonish, using the same method - but at least they’re going about that intentionally and with some purpose in their writing. They know they can’t drop some huge “masterwork” and expect it to be grabbed up right away and lauded. With a couple books out there, they can at least point to what they’ve done before as a way to stand out a little, and to get good practice in writing novels.
I have to agree with the others – the route of short stories in magazines as a step towards writing books isn’t all that common anymore.
First of all, there’s a lot fewer magazines publishing short fiction than there used to be. And now that self-publication is becoming more respectable you don’t need to ‘impress’ an editor/agent with your skills that way. Write your book, put it on Amazon or Smashword or whatever and see what happens. If you write a decent tale, and make a little effort a self-promotion, readers will find you.
Second, it was always a sort of silly requirement. Short stories emphasize different skills, and appeal to different readers/writers than do novels. Do we insist that a poet has to start with writing haiku before they can tackle sonnets? Does a would-be oil painter first have to achieve success with water colors?
Chimera, I’d say if your ‘would be writer’ friends are actually writing, as in, putting in the time with butt in seat and fingers on keyboard on a regular basis, they are going about becoming good writers in the best way possible.
Have to agree, not done. But it doesn’t matter.
Writing is incredibly hard, producing the content is way more important than the revenue stream (or not) in the first couple of years. People who want to be writers are writing fan fic and developing from there, self-publishing, blogging non-fiction, drawing comics, or going the agent/magazine/publisher route, but they’re writing.
People who want to be writers but aren’t writing, well, why even bother talking to them about magazines?
Somebody else needs to support her 15 kids???
Well, the hostage story just got 10x more interesting: Part of a human body was found in the house. The other bits were across the river in South Carolina. The dead kidnapper is apparently to blame, and the hostage (widow of the kidnapper) and her brother are charged with concealing that death. Gruesome!
Bother. I want to watch the Alien kittens web cam, and for some reason today it’s not working. Just keeps saying “initializing live feed” and keeps spinning. And it’s pretty obvious from chat that it’s “just me”.
<pout>
I want some kitteny goodness!
Much as I like you, curlie, I have to call BS on that video. That woman looks way too young and healthy to have had so many kids.
Back when I lived in a San Bernardino slum, the neighbor across the street would send her kids across a very busy street to knock on doors and beg for ice to keep their food cold because their breeder had sold their fridge for beer money. I felt sorry for them, so gave them ice. Next came the breeder, telling me how hard it was with so many kids and wanting me to give her money and milk.
She really did seem to feel that she was entitled to money and stuff from people she didn’t know. She was willing to knock on my door and demand it for the children.
My rant is cat involved again. Lucky is an asshole. Lucky is acting like a grade school boy who likes a girl. Lucky shows off for Karen, he can jump, he can claw, he can open cupboards and roll around in the pots and pans.
Karen is equally at blame for this because she refuses to shout NO and then use the squirt gun I bought her.
Karen’s idea of teaching a cat to stay off the counters is to grab him and wag her finger in his face, then kiss him between the ears before putting him on the floor.
I’m quite certain that you could post a poll on this board that said;
“This guy busted into my house, raped my spouse and children right before my eyes and then kicked my pet to death. I called him an asshole as he ran out the door. Who is the bigger jerk?”
And there would be people saying it was you.
Was that directed at me Chimera? Because I’m now totally confused.
I’m pretty sure he’s talking about this thread where in post #5, he related two incidents in theaters where he had his feet up on the back of the seat in front of him, and people wanted to (in a not-crowded theater) sit in the seat he was resting his feet on. A couple people - me included - pointed out that it was awfully yucky of him to prop his feet on a seat back, where someone later could get dirt/theater floor goo on their back. (I’ll note I merely gave him points off for that behavior, not excusing the “I’m going to sit right in front of you when the place is empty” folks.)
So of course that is totally comparable to some dude swearing at a murderer, because we all fucking hate potty-mouths that much. 
Vague-posting sucks.
Hey, hijacking off of that, on the subject of vague-bookers - dear friend who has to check in on Facebook everywhere you go, checking in at the ER and not giving any goddamned details is a real dick move. I’m glad it turns out your wife only had a benign lump, as you explained over an hour later, but fuck, either you “checked in” at the wrong department of the hospital and freaked everybody out, including your daughter, or you took her to the ER over a lump found on self-exam, I assume (WTF?!) and did a check-in without explaining a damned thing.
No, flatlined, it was not aimed at you. 
Eh, not just that one but a lot of polls and subjects on this board. The one where the poster (and I wish I could remember who it was, but I’m too lazy to do the work to find the specific post that far back) said that Faramir was as bad as Sauron for ‘torturing’ Gollum always comes to mind as pretty much the Epic Example of Doper False Equivalencies. There was another poll like a month or two back where some people were really off the wall too, but I can’t remember exactly what it was.
Don’t even get me started on the “what makes you look down on people” thread.
My mind came to this after a FB exchange with a friend about people being more offended by swearing than by bigger things like war and famine. How people are addicted to anger and outrage and how it makes them feel powerful and righteous. And sadly, since the big things are overwhelming, people blot them out of their minds and concentrate on the little outrages they can use to make themselves feel superior to the people around them.
I swear to god some people should be permanently banned from the internet on the grounds that they are simply too fucking stupid to ever use it again. Don’t you dare post anything on this topic, Zoolane. In fact don’t even think about it because you’re simply incapable of any kind of thought at all.
It does look like a real story - here is another take on it. That’s a pretty sickening story (and a pretty sickening attitude from her) - a woman and her three baby daddies who refuse to take responsibility for the kids they keep on making, but it’s the kids who suffer from her irresponsibility, of course.
One of my daughter’s classmates came by to sell us chocolate to raise funds for her local basketball team. She’s eleven and she’s taller than I am. So are half the neighborhood kids right now.
Sigh.
That is some epic-level entitlement right there. Those poor children.
Oh God, your wedding isn’t until August and IT’S ALL YOU FUCKING TALK ABOUT.
I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing we live in different cities now. I mean, since we’re texting or Facebooking, I don’t need to have to put on a smiley happy act, but at the same time, if we could do things in person, we could see a movie and talk about that instead.
I kinda dread the text message tone now because it’s going to be you, talking about the wedding. I love you, you’re my friend, I’m your bridesmaid, but I’m not looking forward to 9/10 of our conversations for the next half a year being about your wedding.
Hemming circle skirts is an evil task.
I wish I could find a modern equivalent of the old Palm Pilots. My Tungsten C seems to be in good shape, still, but getting it to sync to the Palm Desktop and getting that working on Windows 7 was a week or more process in tracking things down (and annoyingly, I did NOT write it all down, so I’d better hope nothing happens to these hard drives) and getting things talking to each other. If I ever have to go to Windows 8 …
As near as I can tell, the nearest equivalent of a PDA these days is the smartphone, but I don’t need a phone with data capabilities or even texting. Hell, I barely turn my mobile on, it’s basically for emergencies, when I’m traveling, or needing to meet up with someone. I think I’ve used it to call someone maybe 10 times in the 7 years I’ve owned it outside of those three purposes. But it seems like you can’t get a smartphone without the whopping contracts, monthly fees, and data plans, and you can’t get a low-minute, no data phone plan with anything more than a feature phone.
It gives me a sad.
You could get an iPod Touch with WiFi capabilities only (no data plan), but of course it won’t have the same apps as the Tungsten.